NCAA.com | February 11, 2017

March Madness extends to February with first-ever in-season look at the NCAA Tournament Bracket

March Madness is heating up early this season. For the first time ever, the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Selection Committee will offer teams and fans an in-season look at the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship bracket. NCAA Men’s Basketball Chair Mark Hollis will be in studio for the reveal of the nation’s top 16 seeds, identifying the top-four teams in each region as they stand on Feb. 11. CBS Sports and Turner Sports will present NCAA MARCH MADNESS BRACKET PREVIEW, airing Saturday, Feb. 11 at 12:30 PM, ET on CBS.

Leading off the show, the bracket with the Committee’s top 16 seeds as of Feb. 11 will be revealed. Hollis, along with host Greg Gumbel and analysts Clark Kellogg and Seth Davis, will discuss the selection and seeding process as well as the reasoning behind the Committee’s first-ever in-season bracket preview.

Noted bracketologist Jerry Palm also will join Gumbel, Kellogg and Davis later in the show to project out the entire 68 team bracket, analyze the field, discuss bubble teams and highlight key story lines heading into March.

“We are excited about giving the fans a glimpse to what the men’s basketball committee is thinking at this point of the season, and creating a buzz as we look towards Selection Sunday,” said Mark Hollis, the director of athletics at Michigan State University and chair of this year’s committee. “It’s important to recognize after this list has been released, there is still a significant portion of the regular season to be played and every league must stage its conference tournament. There’s potential for quite a bit of movement until we do it for real March 12, but this early peek will give everyone insight as to where the committee stands as we hit the stretch run of the regular season.”

Twenty-nine days following the Committee’s bracket preview, the official NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship field of 68 will be announced exclusively on CBS on Sunday, March 12.

For the seventh consecutive year, Turner Sports and CBS Sports provide live coverage of all 67 games from the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship across four national television networks – TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV – and via NCAA March Madness Live. This year’s NCAA Final Four National Semifinals on Saturday, April 1, along with the National Championship on Monday, April 3, will be broadcast on CBS.